As the upcoming release of the second version of Redstone for Windows 10 is imminent, many new features regarding productivity are expected to be unveiled. A while back, the addition of new functionality related to the integration of Cortana into the operating system and system services – such as Office – was said to be included within future versions of Windows.

Recently, several users have discovered some additional hidden enhancements and features to the Cortana app on the desktop. Chris explains that his poking around into a change that currently only seems to affecting only a small group of people – a movement of the search box to the top. Some of these changes are only visual enhancements pertaining to displaying elements around and within the text field itself, but upon further investigation, another new change can be found. The text box, normally grey or matching the set accent color, can be set to correspond with a rather light theme – changing the background of the box to white.

What does all of this mean? Well, it could just be nothing significant. In fact, these elements could just be remnants of the porting of the mobile app to the desktop, given that Windows 10 Mobile allows the majority of the Cortana app to be shown with a light theme – but the inclusion of a movement of the text entry field increases my suspicion that there is a bit more to this here. With speculation of a floating Cortana that would contextually give information to a user existing for quite a while now, the addition of a versatile text box will make sense, especially if the app were to be somewhere near the top of a screen. A complete light theme for the desktop with Redstone 2 would also be a welcome addition, and would unify the platform between the broad range of devices running the operating system, and make the appearance of the operating system more cohesive. It’s to be noted that these changes were discovered from build 14393+, suggesting that some of these features may have been scheduled for a release alongside the Anniversary Update, and got pushed back.

As the time until the general availability of the next version of Windows 10 shrinks, we could very well see some of these elements come to fruition – and this finding through Cortana may be one of the first sightings of them.

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